The Fantasy Football Report

By: Gavin Schnowske

What is Fantasy Football?

Fantasy Football is a popular game wherein a group of around 6-12 participants take on the role of a football general manager, building their own teams of professional football players to compete in head-to-head matchups for the duration of 14-18 weeks, with scoring based on the statistical performances of one's players in real-time games.

The first 14 weeks are considered as the regular season. The postseason, commonly referred to as the playoffs, occurs during weeks 15-18 and requires a certain threshold of wins to qualify.

This is my first year playing fantasy football, having been invited to play in a modest 6-man league between a close group of friends. Considering how fundamental statistics and the analysis of data are to the playing of fantasy football, it only made sense for myself to take on the task of visualizing the various data I've collected over these past few months, both to analyze trends within the league as well as for my own personal enjoyment.

Change in Point Totals: Weeks 1-10

In this graph, I displayed the change in point totals over the span of 10 weeks with the x-axis, and visualized the additional points added towards the player's point total that week using the y-axis.

The first thing you may notice is the volatility that many players display in their weekly point scorings. Peculiarities such as Mujeeb's measly debut of 61.58 to an explosive showing of 151.38 points just the next week seem to imply high variance to player scoring outcomes week by week. As we are dealing with statistics, however, there is always to be expected outliers who stray away from the general trend. Adam has proved himself to be a remarkably consistent performer, reliably occupying a top 1 to 2 showing weekly, so it should come to no surprise Adam comes out with the highest overall point total of weeks 1-10, clocking in with an impressive 1529.44 points accrued.

Change in Win Rate: Weeks 1-10

The first thing that stood out to me in this graph was Tyler's falloff exiting the beggining weeks, going on a 6 week losing streak that would briefly drag him all the way down to a 17% win rate, the lowest anyone has gone thus far. Similarly, even despite consistently strong weekly outings, Adam suffered an initial 4 week slump that brought his win rate as low as 25%, although experienced a rebound beggining in week 5. Bryan is the most volatile figure in the data, frequently teasing a losing record, only to spike up once he comes close to an under 50% win rate.

Pie Chart

In this graph, I displayed the change in point totals over the span of 10 weeks with the x-axis, and visualized the additional points added towards the player's point total that week using the y-axis.

Player Stats

Player Total Points
Adam 1529.44
Gavin 1308.46
Bryan 1296.38
Arnold 1142.64
Mujeeb 1236.84
Tyler 1094.02

In this graph, I displayed the change in point totals over the span of 10 weeks with the x-axis, and visualized the additional points added towards the player's point total that week using the y-axis.